


The Light Reflects and I See You Again

by ReminiscentLullaby



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Blood, F/M, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Love Confessions, Major Illness, The peacock miraculous was never fixed, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:34:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24564697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReminiscentLullaby/pseuds/ReminiscentLullaby
Summary: Ever since she had first taken up the peacock miraculous, Nathalie has been willing to sacrifice everything for Gabriel’s sake if necessary.But fate has always had different plans. If the future isn’t set in stone, then it’s up to Nathalie to change it. In order to do that, she’ll have to confront a reality that was never meant to be.A reality where she died for the man she loves.
Relationships: Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth/Nathalie Sancoeur
Comments: 33
Kudos: 105
Collections: GabeNath Book Club and Art Club Server





	1. Another Ghost, Another Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hiiraeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiiraeth/gifts).



> This fic is based off an AU conceived by the brilliant [Noorooz](https://noorooz.tumblr.com)
> 
> Enjoy!

Part I - Another Ghost, Another Day

Nathalie bent over the bathroom sink, retching. Her lungs blazed within her chest, her ribcage ached from the exertion of coughing the life out of her body, and every expulsion of air sent a stabbing pain through her like a javelin. Blots of crimson mucus clung to the walls of the sink. Thinner droplets of blood trickled down towards the drain, and when Nathalie finally finished, her head throbbing like the tick of a time bomb about to explode, she turned on the faucet, and let it all run away.

Spots of darkness coated her vision like TV static. When Nathalie finally peered up into her reflection, she watched her two tired eyes converge into one at the center of her forehead before she stopped seeing altogether. Her feet failed to hold her up any longer. As Nathalie's knees buckled, she grabbed the edge of the countertop and sank slowly to the floor, laying her body across the fluffy bathmat below that felt less like a bathmat now than it did a plot of dirt, grainy and old and like she could be buried in it.

"Oh…" she heard herself say. Her own voice sounded as though it was coming through the floor. A persistent ringing in her ears drowned out all sound, including the faucet still running above her.

But once she had been laying there for a minute, her vision began to clear. The panic she'd felt as she wondered if she'd been going blind faded away. Nathalie's fingers curled into the fibers of the bathmat. Each breath she took was rough and heavy as though the air had thickened with sand and smoke. She ached from head to toe, weary down to the bone.

She hadn't processed the first couple knocks at the door. But when she failed to react and the person on the other side called out her name, she forced herself to sit up. Nathalie's head whirled in response to the elevation, throbbing to the beat of the next several knocks.

"Nathalie?" said Gabriel, sounding worried. "Nathalie!"

"I'm alright, sir," she answered. She tasted blood.

"Are you sure?" The locked door handle shifted as he rested his hand on it from the other side. "You've been in there for…"

Ten minutes. A glass of water hadn't been nearly enough to tame the wave of faintness that crashed over her while she was sitting at her desk that long ago. She dismissed herself to the bathroom to splash some water on her face and gather some more toilet paper to cough into when she felt those thorns sprout through her chest. But Nathalie had been shocked to look in the mirror and find her face so pale, her eyes so sunken in, leaving such heavy gray shadows. Her illness worsened all at once. She doubled over, coughing. She coughed until she couldn't breathe. She coughed until she spat blood out at the mirror, and then into the palm of her hand, and then into the sink when she finally felt weak enough to _stop_.

"I'm okay," she said. "I'll be out in a few minutes."

She didn't hear him pull away from the door. He stood there, waiting, perhaps, for her to emerge.

 _Get back to your feet_ , she told herself. Nathalie reached up to set her palms on the countertop. Her grip painted a streak of blood across the white quartz. Nathalie grabbed a washcloth and soaked it under the running faucet, which she then promptly switched off. She cleaned up the mess she had made, wiping thoroughly, and scanned her eyes across the bathroom for any spots she may have missed.

 _Get back to work_ , she thought next, and threw the washcloth into the trash bin underneath the counter. She hid it with some toilet paper. It was best not to leave any evidence of the episode.

Nathalie turned too quickly towards the door. Her head rushed to catch up with her movement, and she stumbled forward, grabbing the doorknob with too much force.

"Nathalie?" Gabriel said.

She unlocked the door, rapidly blinking the dizziness out of her eyes before she came face to face with him.

"You look…" he said, grabbing her by shoulder.

"I'm sorry, sir, I'm just a little tired. I'll be fine," she insisted.

"Unwell," he finished. Gabriel stepped aside so she could finally move out of the doorway. His hand trailed against her body as she walked, bracing to catch her as if she was in danger to fall. "Perhaps, you should retire early."

"No, please. I only need to distract myself," she replied, not sparing him a glance. "I'd prefer to go back to work."

"The battle today was longer than usual, Nathalie. I can see that it took a great toll on you."

Nathalie self-consciously wiped her lips with the back of her hand. Had there been any remaining blood there, he would have already noticed, but the move was a rather reflexive one as she was reminded of the akuma attack that had stretched from eight o'clock that morning to three in the afternoon. She hadn't been transformed all that time, having only entered the fight herself several hours in to provide some extra force, but Mayura was beginning to withstand less and less exertion. She knew she pushed herself today.

"Sir, I'm fine," she told him. They emerged into the atrium together, now on their way back to the atelier. Nathalie glanced over her shoulder at him, and Gabriel at once drew his hand away, returning it to his side. "We lost a considerable amount of time today due to that attack. There's a lot of work to catch up on."

Gabriel did not argue with this, though the force with which he sealed his lips indicated that he wanted to.

"Don't worry," she added softly, hoping this would put him more at ease. She wasn't sure how many different ways she had told him something similar.

When Nathalie was back at her desk, she spent the majority of the next hour catching up on all the emails she had missed throughout the day. Luckily, the episode had seemed to pass out of her body, and though her head was still in a fog and her body still aching, she at least felt confident that she wouldn't have another coughing fit before she was finished. Nathalie sat in her desk chair with her spine ramrod straight and her shoulders rolled back, attempting to appear as attentive as possible to the man standing agitated across the room.

His concern had always been touching. The way Nathalie saw it, Gabriel didn't have to care for what she was willing to risk. He loved Emilie enough that didn't matter. Ultimately, wishing his wife back to life was more important than any sacrifice she had to make to ensure that was possible. For months now, Gabriel had been becoming increasingly more worried for her health. Nathalie knew that it couldn't be easy for him, to watch somebody else succumb to the same pain and exhaustion that had dragged Emilie under. When his blue-gray eyes peered across the atelier to watch her, Nathalie reminded herself, the reason he didn't want to see her this way was because he couldn't afford to lose her alliance, the same way he couldn't afford to lose a stellar employee. Nathalie knew both sides.

 _He needs my help_. If she believed her participation in battle wasn't going to lead them closer to victory, then she would find another way to assist him. The worse her health became, the less she'd be able to don the transformation, but Mayura was too valuable an advantage to exhaust. She provided where he fell short. She gave when he could give no more. She was the arm he could reach a little further with, and the leg he could stand a little taller with, and the heart that beat in a steady rhythm, urging his to slow.

There would be no Mayura if Nathalie was too weak to embody her. When her lungs cleared and her vision ceased spinning, that was always the fear hardening her mind. Every time she was asked how she felt, she answered, "I'm fine," but she knew she was dying. She knew her time was limited, and that meant Mayura's was as well. Nathalie thought through fog and breathed through brambles, and each and every one of those beats was a reminder that she could only offer her help for so long.

Gabriel was afraid of that too, she told herself. Many times, he'd insisted that he could no longer bear to see her hurt like this, but he always came back around to hand her that miraculous again. Nathalie didn't blame him. The painful part of all of this was the reminder of what that power had taken from him before, but the worse danger was losing the opportunity to take it back, an opportunity he robbed from himself each time she relinquished the brooch, and restored when he pressed it back into her palm.

But Nathalie should have been giving him more credit than that. It wasn't only Mayura he dreaded to let slip away. Gabriel was a good man, and he didn't want to watch Nathalie suffer any more than he wanted to lose his ally. In the worst moments, she couldn't even feel his arms around her, not while she was fighting to remain conscious; but most of the time, his touch warmed her through her blood. As he drew her into his chest or squeezed her hand between his own, Nathalie's pulse fluttered. Because he did care. About _her_. It flowed out from the lines in his palms and the breath on the top of her head.

Gabriel had been caught on crossroads before, torn between persistence and surrender. He was a man hanging uncomfortably close to the balance of paralyzed inaction, tipped more so one direction by a love falling further away from him and an assistant seeking his long-awaited contentment. As the latter of these two things, Nathalie felt at times that she was betraying her own mission by melting into his touch, by listening when he asked her to stop. If she gave up, she feared he'd be more likely to dangle passively in his misery than pursue fulfillment elsewhere. She couldn't let that happen. She couldn't let him yield to despair when there was yet a chance of changing everything.

So, when at the end of the hour Gabriel approached her desk as she was signing off her last belated email response, she glanced up from her computer screen and smiled at him brightly. "I'm feeling much better now, sir," she told him. It wasn't a lie. Whatever pain sat with her now was nothing compared to coughing up blood. But she needed to be as convincing as possible to soothe the ache of guilt that surely incited him to approach her now.

He didn't return her smile. A grave expression aged him by ten years. "Nathalie," he said. "I believe that now, but please, I ask of you never to hesitate to tell me if something is wrong."

She dipped her head at him. "Of course, sir."

"I'm relieved you are better now, but I know you were in pretty bad shape earlier. Is there anything I should know?"

Nathalie hesitated, not as an indication of her deceit, but to hold his gaze sternly for a moment of meaningful silence before she answered, "No, sir."

Gabriel winced. It was barely perceptible, just a shift in his gaze rather than a movement in his body or face. A darkening of the blue-gray shade of his iris, as though it was taking on the weight and the gloom of a storm cloud.

She lifted one of her hands off the keyboard and reached it across her desk. Her fingers came to a rest on the glass, pointed out towards him, while she continued to gently smile.

Slowly, Gabriel's hands came undone. They appeared from behind his back, and he had to take two steps forward in order to lay one of them down on top of hers. Just overlapping her fingers with his.

She was the first to pull away, a simple, soft movement that she paired with a nod, as if to say, _See?_

And he answered, turning away, "Okay."

* * *

It was June. As Nathalie entered her bedroom after her shower, the moon pierced through the sky, slicing through the spaces in her blinds and casting blades of light over the floor and her bed. The weight of the day's loss hadn't fully set in until she had returned to her apartment that night, the hours between their defeat and then being spent trying to distract both herself and Gabriel from her sickness. Once she had closed the apartment door and locked it behind her, she felt as though she had been struck by some invisible force, the disappointment of failure having finally acquired the opportunity to make itself known. Nathalie had leaned back against her door, taken a deep breath, and proceeded right to the shower to wash away her weariness. She'd taken one that morning, but she always felt she needed another after a transformation, like there was still some blue skin to rub away.

Nathalie stood in the center of the room, taking her damp hair down from its towel, and staring out at the glaring summer moon. At this time of the year, it glowed vaguely yellow, making it look to her more like a sun failing to set the sky in a blue blaze. She hung her towel and climbed into bed. When she faced the window, she could still sense the light faintly illuminating her visage on the other side of her closed eyelids.

She got used to it quickly, but a few minutes later, as she had fallen halfway asleep, there seemed to be an explosion of light in her room. Nathalie shot up. When she opened her eyes, she had to close them again right away, lest she be blinded by the flat white circle of light, the diameter of which stretched practically from the floor to the ceiling of the room.

Nathalie jolted as a hand clasped over her mouth. The darkness returned just a second later, and she opened her eyes to stare into the face of a red-haired superhero hovering above her.

"Please, don't scream," she said. Nathalie listened, glaring into the intruder's darkened face. "I apologize for showing up like this, but I needed to find you alone, and you have very rarely been alone lately."

Nathalie recognized the tall ears sprouting out of the heroine's hair. As her eyes adjusted once more to the moonlit room, she could also make out the pale blue shade of her costume, and the umbrella that had been dropped on the bed beside her. This was Bunnyx, the rabbit miraculous holder of the future.

"There is a problem. A big one," said Bunnyx, carefully removing her hand from Nathalie's mouth. "I need your help."

"My help?" Nathalie echoed. Bunnyx withdrew, stepping back several paces and grabbing her umbrella once again. Before asking any more questions, Nathalie reached for the lamp beside her bed and switched it on. Her hand was shaking as she pulled it away, as now that the initial shock of having been intruded upon at night was fading away, she was realizing that she was alone in the room with a miraculous holder, a miraculous holder from a future where Hawkmoth's mantle had been taken up by somebody else, and Gabriel and Nathalie may very well have been found out, defeated, and thrown into prison. Although, if that was the case, Nathalie couldn't imagine what would be the use of traveling back ten years to confront her. She tried to push down the panic bubbling within.

"Get dressed," Bunnyx said, tossing Nathalie the clothes she had laid out on top of her dresser for the next day. "We don't have a lot of time."

Nathalie snatched her sweater out of the air and rose to her feet, glowering at the younger woman viciously. "Bold of you to appear in a flash of light in my own bedroom this late at night to begin with, but to offer me no explanation upfront?"

"As I said, we don't have much time. I'll have the opportunity once I get you into the future." retorted Bunnyx. She turned around, facing the bedroom door, a signal that she was expecting Nathalie to change.

"You are taking me to the future?"

"That's the only reason I would be here, that or a time-traveling akuma, and I don't think I'll have to deal with another one of those anytime soon."

Bunnyx wasn't budging, so Nathalie got dressed. Once she had pulled her sweater over her head and untucked her still-damp hair, Bunnyx opened the time-gate, creating another disk of bright white light that Nathalie squinted her eyes against.

"How do I know I can trust you?" Nathalie asked.

Bunnyx's lips curled into a smile. She gave her umbrella a twirl. "Oh, well, I suppose I didn't expect you to question me. I always thought the citizens of Paris were pretty well-aware of the various heroes they've met over the last year – right, it's been a year at this point? I at least would anticipate they'd find the time-traveling bunny-themed superhero rather memorable. Unless of course, you have a different reason not to trust me?"

Nathalie's blood turned to ice. The knowing glint in Bunnyx's blue eyes confirmed her fears, that the heroine knew exactly who she was. Nathalie stepped back, away from the gate, nearly running herself into the wall behind her. She stopped the trembling of her hands by linking them together behind her back, and she forced her voice to remain level, when she said, "I don't want to go with you."

"I'm not going to do anything to you," insisted Bunnyx, her tone softer now. "But believe me when I say there isn't enough time to wait around like this. Your future is in danger. The entire future of Paris is in danger if you don't help me now. I would not have come to you if you were not the only person capable of fixing this."

She extended her hand to Nathalie, who hesitated for several seconds, wondering if she would somehow be led to her doom either way. Had Bunnyx decided that it would be best for Paris if she interfered with the past to bring Hawkmoth and Mayura's reign to its premature end? If not, maybe would she threaten to use her knowledge as leverage to get Nathalie to comply? Nathalie's thoughts shifted back and forth, her fingers folding and unfolding multiple times over the ten seconds of silence that passed. She was ready to decline again, for Gabriel's mission was too important to so willingly risk like this.

"If there is one thing I know about you," Bunnyx said with a smirk, before she could speak, "it's that you are very capable of playing the hero. I need that side of you now."

Nathalie exhaled shakily through her teeth. She didn't have the peacock miraculous with her to defend herself, but the longer she made Bunnyx wait, the more the heroine's inviting countenance hardened. Soon, Nathalie was looking at a very worried young woman, who's smirk curved in the opposite direction and whose brow pinched above eyes dimming with doubt. Bunnyx flexed her fingers, a clear indication that she was desperate for Nathalie's acceptance.

"Please," whispered Bunnyx.

Nathalie shut her eyes. She took a deep breath. At last, she raised her hand to take Bunnyx's, but they never made contact. Nathalie's eyes flicked open to watch her fist close over empty air. The rabbit miraculous holder's hand flickered out of existence, and her eyes stretched wide to see that her right arm now ended just above her wrist.

"We have to go," she said. Her left hand, which was still intact, grabbed Nathalie by the forearm and drew her through the gate. They passed swiftly through the burrow's interior. All the while, Nathalie was too overwhelmed by her surroundings to speak, all of those circular windows depicting so many different moments in time that she could not process any of them. Bunnyx led her to another gate and pushed her through.

A wall of frigid air struck her as she emerged on the other side. Nathalie's scalp went ice cold as the wind tossed the wet strands of her hair behind her head. She folded her arms across her chest and curled her toes within her slippers – she hadn't even brought real shoes!

Bunnyx stepped ahead of her, closing the burrow with a wave of her umbrella. "Sorry," she said, "I would have told you to grab a coat, but I already wasted a lot of time just trying to get you to come with me."

"How far are we into the future?" asked Nathalie.

"Six months."

They were standing at a familiar intersection, one that Nathalie always passed through when traveling between her apartment building and the Agreste mansion. She was used to seeing it crawling with vehicles, but now it was completely empty, and down both streets there was not a car to be seen, not even parked on the side of the road.

The more she looked around, the more uneasy she began to feel. It seemed that she and Bunnyx were the only people within a considerable radius. The buildings flanking the streets seemed empty. Windows that were intact revealed no Parisians on the other side of the glass, but many, many windows had been shattered apart. The sidewalks were littered with shards, and the curbs were catching glass like they caught leaves in the fall.

Nathalie had never in her life heard the city so quiet.

She felt like she was standing in a video game.

"What happened in six months?" she murmured.

Bunnyx started walking, and Nathalie followed behind, constantly shifting her eyes back and forth to gawk at the destruction and emptiness of the city. Paris had been completely hollowed out and stood before her a cold gray shell. "Well," replied the time-traveler, "you know how powerful akumas can be."

"An akuma did this?"

"What else?"

It was silly of her to expect another explanation. Nathalie supposed there was just something about all this damage that felt more permanent than the havoc wreaked by any of Hawkmoth's supervillains. The longer she walked, the less she could fathom that so little time had passed. To her, it looked like the city had worn away, that its scars were deep and ancient. Whatever akuma this was, it looked like it had dealt decades worth of destruction in such little time.

Nathalie rubbed her arms. "I don't understand. I thought you came from the future. A different future. One where Ladybug and Chat Noir are still the heroes and everything is – relatively normal. How is this six months from the present?"

"Time is…fragile," Bunnyx replied, glancing down. "You'd think it be as simple as everything moving in this continuous, unbreakable loop, like in movies, but…for the sake of keeping it simple, let's just say it's more like a train track, and there are certain factors, certain very rare factors that can derail the train. Usually, my kwami is the one who sets this stuff straight, but with particular situations, a human influence is essential."

Nathalie's slippers were loose fitting and she struggled to keep them on her feet as she walked along. She flexed her toes and ground her hands together and blinked at Bunnyx shyly. "Why me?"

"You are the only person who can take down this akuma."

"But how? I don't have a miraculous."

"That's for the best. This akuma can track miraculous. Every single one in Paris has been seized with the exception of Ladybug and Chat Noir's, who have been in hiding for months. I'm in serious danger out here. Soon enough, the akuma's minions will track me down, which means I need to get you to the Agreste mansion as quickly as I can."

Nathalie, despite Bunnyx's words, came to a sudden halt. Continuing to press ahead, Bunnyx merely threw a glance over her shoulder and waved a hand for Nathalie to catch up, evidently serious about not having time to waste. Nathalie blew a warm breath into her palms and caught up again. "Why the Agreste mansion? Is that where the akuma is?"

"Sancoeur," Bunnyx said gravely, "this isn't some everyday civilian we're dealing with here. The akuma isn't being controlled by Hawkmoth – the akuma _is_ Hawkmoth."

If she hadn't been freezing already, Nathalie certainly felt as though she had been plunged into ice water now. A shiver rippled through her body. The cold, dry air had already been tightening her lungs, but for a moment, she felt the oxygen being squeezed out of them. She pressed a fist to her mouth and coughed, flinching at the stabbing-pain that lanced through her chest.

"Hawkmoth?" she rasped. Her heart lurched.

Bunnyx took her by the shoulder and pushed her along, eyes glimmering with concern. "Something happened in your present that set off a divergent chain of events leading to Hawkmoth akumatizing himself to track down the miraculous. This never happened under the correct timeline of reality, and now everybody's future is in danger. You are the only person Hawkmoth trusts, which means you are the only person who can fix this."

"Do you know why he akumatized himself?" asked Nathalie. He'd done it before, but not like this. Nothing she had seen so far could have possibly been the work of Scarlet Moth. Her breaths became shallower and shallower as her mind raced with questions about how all of this had gone so wrong. Despite knowing Bunnyx was fully aware of her identity, Nathalie still found herself reluctant to ask, "Is he okay?" Fear won over caution, however.

"I haven't had the time or the ability to investigate. Shit—!" Bunnyx cursed, as her foot went out from under her. Like her right hand, it vanished, leaving only one leg to hop on. "As you can see, my entire future hangs in the balance, and you can probably assume yours does too, so as much as Hawkmoth is your partner in crime and you want him to succeed, you're going to have to have to undo this."

"But—"

Nathalie had no chance to speak before a low moan echoed down the empty street from behind them, sounding like a discordant series of many overlapping voices. Bunnyx's face paled.

"It's them."

"Who?"

"Hawkmoth's minions. They're coming for me."

At once, Nathalie set Bunnyx's arm around her shoulders and started to lead her quickly away from that cacophonic chorus.

"We're not going to outrun them," said the rabbit miraculous holder, but Nathalie pressed forward. She made a turn around a corner, on the street where the Agreste residence was found. It was still several blocks away, but they were getting closer.

Nathalie jolted as something flew above their heads, something larger than any bird she'd ever seen, soaring from one rooftop to the next. Their pursuers seemed to see it too, as they all released a joint call that resounded through the streets at a bone-chilling volume. Nathalie nearly tripped as she lost a slipper, but there was no time to retrieve it. She moved on, the frigid surface of the ground stinging her foot with every step.

Then, something descended and landed on its feet several meters away from them. Nathalie froze, taking in the unbelievable sight in front of her. From the neck down, they looked like a totally normal civilian, in spite of the small rips in their clothing and their missing shoes, but Nathalie was staring fearfully into a face that was the color of ash and eyes that had lost their pupils, clouded, swollen, and a very pale sickly shade of green. Antennae sprouted from their temples, and a pair of gray, flat, leaf-like wings lay in a triangular shape across their back.

"What is—?"

The moth-like person let out a deep groan, and from behind came the response of countless other minions copying the unsettling sound.

Bunnyx shoved Nathalie, who toppled to the ground near the sidewalk.

"Go to the Agreste mansion, find Hawkmoth," she urged Nathalie, unfolding the umbrella. "They won't follow you. You don't have a miraculous. They want me."

Nathalie watched as a crowd of moth-people began gliding towards them. Inhuman shouts rattled the disturbing emptiness of the city, filling it instead with something sharp and cold and full of grief. Nathalie felt as though those voices carried weight, weight that sank against her now, pinching her shoulders and shooting down her spine.

Bunnyx opened her burrow. "Go! It's up to you."

She leaped into the light and was gone.

Nathalie didn't wait to see what the moth-people would do next. She staggered to her feet and _ran_. She tripped and fell once more a block later, losing her second slipper, but she pushed forward still. She ran blocks without stopping, though her body screamed at her with every piercing pain through her chest, through her ribs, through her head. She wasn't meant to be pushing herself like this.

The voices started to fade behind her, but Nathalie kept running, and when the Agreste mansion came into view at last, she ran faster. She narrowly missed a pile of shattered glass. She swore when she kicked a pebble with her toe, sending it rolling into the curb where a trash can had been tilted over, possibly having lain there for months undisturbed. Nathalie's ears and nose stung at the cold. She ran against the wind.

When she'd made it, Nathalie clung to the bars of the front gate. Her legs trembled, barely strong enough to hold her up as she coughed around the needles in her throat. The world titled back and forth around her. For a moment, her consciousness faded in and out, vision going dark and then light again. She started to slide towards the ground. Nathalie dug her fingernails into the palms of her hand. She dug hard enough to break the skin, desperate to keep herself awake.

 _Go_ , she told herself. _Go_.

The gate was hanging ajar. Nathalie pulled herself off her knees and dragged it open, panting as though she was moving a boulder with her bare hands. She slipped through once the gap was wide enough and stumbled when she no longer had anything to hold on to. Nathalie passed through the courtyard, ignoring the drumming of her head and the heart pulsing in her throat. She tasted blood on the walls of her esophagus.

Nathalie climbed the stairs slowly. Her legs quivered with every step, until they had nearly gone numb. She leaned against the door once she had grabbed its handle, taking fast and deep breaths while she pressed her forehead against the wood.

 _I'm coming, Gabriel_.

The door was unlocked.

She entered.


	2. It's Her. Maybe It's a Shadow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Watch Me Read You by Odette inspired the title of this fic.
> 
> Please, enjoy!

Part II - It's Her. Maybe It's a Shadow

The Agreste mansion was not much different from the rest of the city. Though the atrium appeared just the same as she had seen it when she last ended her workday, at once, Nathalie sensed there was something severely wrong with the place. Like the outside, it was freezing. When Nathalie leaned against the door to briefly rest, she watched her own breath pour out of her mouth in plumes. The house also felt abandoned; something in the air made her hesitant to believe that she would even see as much as a ghost lingering in the darkest corners. Assuredly, it was not a very lively structure on a normal day, but whatever dash of spirit was to be found in its crevices had been sucked dry now. Nathalie felt the relief from having made it out of the streets seeping out of her bones, and it took all her strength not to wither onto the stone-cold floor beneath her bare feet.

She needed to find Hawkmoth.

Each inhale she took in was sharp enough to make her wince, but she could not wait any longer to recover. Nathalie pushed herself off the door and began making for the atelier. For a moment, she considered ascending first to Adrien's bedroom, for if there was anybody who was unlike the moth-like minions wandering Paris in the cold, it would be Gabriel's beloved son. But she resisted the inclination. As long as she could get through to Hawkmoth, she would be able to fix whatever additional problems that had arisen in the last six months. She hoped silently to herself that Adrien was safe.

Nathalie pressed the door handle, but it didn't budge. She pressed again, harder, and felt something shift on the other side. She knew the door didn't have a lock. There must have been something blocking her way. Nathalie doubted Hawkmoth was anywhere else but in his lair right now, but she knocked anyway, calling "Sir?", hoping that if by any chance he was still in the atelier, he would yield to the familiar sound of her voice.

But the stillness eerily persisted. Nathalie brushed back her hair and tried putting all of her weight on the door handle, attempting to force it down. When that didn't work, she rattled it continuously, until she finally started to hear the barricade tremble against the door. But several minutes of jittering ultimately did not get her into the room. Nathalie released a frustrated grunt. She gave the handle several more violent jolts, before she shouted a curse and slammed her fist against the door.

Nathalie's head was pounding, but she could pay no mind to it. She spun around and raced back outside. The first brick she saw dropped against the sidewalk, she retrieved, and returned as quickly as possible. She bashed the door handle again and again, each strike sending a shocking echo through the atrium. Blood bloomed under her fingernail when she pinched her index finger once beneath the brick, but she sucked on her teeth and shook out of her hand to relieve the pain. Nathalie continued giving the handle blow after blow, until at long last, the thing came loose. With one final bash, the door handle gave, and so did whatever object that had been obstructing it.

The brick was tossed on the floor and she pushed into the atelier, panting. A chair laid on the floor right at the entrance, and Nathalie kicked it indignantly away from her, cursing the object for having prevented her entrance for so long. But Nathalie's anger swiftly drained away when she took in the state of the rest of the atelier.

Everything was in disarray. Every piece of furniture, every picture hanging on the wall, had one way or another been visibly damaged. Nathalie gaped at the sight of framed photographs fallen face down on the floor, cracks in their frames, shards of glass beneath them. Two or three hung crookedly on the wall, looking as though a breath could knock them down. The window was broken, allowing the wind to cut through the atelier and rustle Nathalie's hair. Gabriel's podium was overturned, as well as almost every chair in sight. Most shocking though, was what had happened to Emilie's portrait. Though it was still displayed on the wall in the same place it was always to be found, a long, jagged gash had been made in the canvas, beginning at her shoulder and ending at about eye-level at the right side of the painting. Nathalie couldn't imagine what could have possibly made a cut that deep and gaping – the thought of Gabriel having done it was already unfathomable.

The one thing left intact was her desk. Her chair had been tossed among the rest, but the space was otherwise clean and orderly, as though it had traveled with her from the past. Nathalie felt a chill set deep into her bones at the sight of a coffee mug positioned right by the mouse pad. Waiting for her. She hadn't even thought about what she was doing in the future, but by the look of things, it seemed that she didn't mind the chaos much.

 _Find Hawkmoth_.

Nathalie stepped over photo frames and sparse pieces of glass. The rip in Emilie's portrait did not produce any damage over the hidden mechanisms to activate the lift, so Nathalie pressed her fingertips into the correct buttons and began her descent. As she drifted through her dark, her heart sank deeper and deeper into her chest. At this point, it was not even fear that consumed her, but despair. Something terrible had happened to bring both the city and Hawkmoth to this point, and the thought of him being so miserable as to be driven here brought her great anguish. She hoped Bunnyx was right to think she would be able to help, that she wasn't already too late.

"I'm coming," she said aloud, and her voice was amplified in the tight space. The darkness seemed thicker than if she had shut her eyes.

The whir of the lift ceased when she had arrived at last in the lair. Nathalie held her breath, waiting for some kind of address by the man shrouded in the dull gray light spilling through the great window. His suit was black, so black that Nathalie thought she might be able to reach into it like a void in space, and his right hand, gloved in bone-white satin, was fastened around the handle of a magnificent scythe. Her eyes landed on the long, curved blade, and would not release.

She flinched as Hawkmoth's voice cut through the room. "How did you get in?"

Nathalie did not answer. She couldn't. A reassuring greeting was lodged in her throat. She took two, very wary steps forward. Her lack of shoes allowed those steps to be silent, though it didn't seem to make a difference to Hawkmoth.

"I thought I ordered you all to stay away from me unless you had Ladybug and Chat Noir's miraculous," he growled. He rotated his scythe, and the slash of light running across the blade flowed back and forth menacingly. "I asked you long ago to stop wandering in here empty-handed."

Nathalie's heart leaped when he lifted the scythe off the floor. "Sir!" she called, her voice hoarsely escaping. "I'm not a minion. It's me, Nathalie."

No response.

"Hawkmoth?" she murmured. "Gabriel?"

Approaching him, she outstretched her hand. Hawkmoth turned his head, just barely, not enough that he should yet see her, but it was possible he could catch a glimpse of her in the reflection of his blade. She noticed as she got closer that it was quivering. Following the movement down his arm and across his body, she found that his entire form seemed unsteady, as if he was possessed by some fierce emotion.

"Listen to me, you might not want to hear this, but whatever you're trying to do, you need to stop." Nathalie had never asked him to back down before, at least not so directly. She was aware of many instances in which she had changed his mind, particularly about Adrien, but this was the first time she had spoken against him upfront. She did so faintly, knowing he was not fully himself, but she hoped he had not been akumatized for so long that he would not listen to her now.

Her fingertips hovered just centimeters from his back when he spun around so quickly that she barely had time to register it before he had shoved his face into hers. Nathalie staggered back, clutching her hand to her chest, releasing a surprised gasp. His mask was the same as ever, but his skin was the color of slate, and his eyes glowed electrically, a frigid, bright blue. Hawkmoth's lips peeled back to reveal pearl white teeth bared in a dangerous snarl.

" _How dare you?!_ " he roared, lunging towards her. Nathalie fell to the floor to avoid the range of his scythe. " _How dare you?!_ "

"Gabriel," she choked, crawling back, white horror seizing her violently.

The scythe ripped through the air.

"It was _bold_ to try it the first time," Hawkmoth spat. "It is _cruel_ to try it a second. Cruel and foolish!"

"Stop!" she cried.

He swung the scythe back and was about to bring it down when Nathalie shrieked in sheer anticipation of a brutal death. He hesitated, the blade pausing above his head, doubt flickering across his taut, wrathful expression. For just a moment.

When she saw he had waited, Nathalie started to shake. She tried to move away, but her limbs were numb and weak and all she could do was beg him to stop.

He pondered her behavior.

"Why should I?" he then asked darkly, eyes flaring. "You'll just disappear."

Nathalie's head swam, gray and black and blue melting together. Her chest tightened. She couldn't breathe.

"I don't even need this. I could simply…" She jolted at the sound of the scythe hitting the floor. "Touch you."

His hand closed over her arm.

Nathalie's breath shuddered out.

"No…"

His hand opened and closed again.

"What…" he murmured. "What have they done?!"

She was yanked back up to her feet. Hawkmoth leaned his countenance into hers once more, and she struggled to focus on his blazing eyes as they searched hers madly.

"What _are_ you?"

"It's me," she whispered.

He threw her down again as if in disgust. Nathalie's breath hitched as she made impact, and a second later, her lungs exploded into a fit of coughing. Nathalie pressed a fist to her lips as the needles pinned around her heart ripped through her chest. Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes. She tasted blood. First in her throat, then on her tongue.

It was like a rod had been driven through her skull, being twisted and jerked with every cough. She thought her head might burst. Dull flickers of light dappled the edges of vision that had otherwise gone mostly dark. She couldn't see. She couldn't hear anything but the sound of her own coughing and the ferocious roar of blood in her temples.

A minute passed before there was any significant relief. Nathalie could make out the cold metal floor beneath her, and soon the shape of her fist became recognizable, speckled with a few small ruby droplets. A wave of dizziness rushed upon her and lightened the dense agony in her head, only to make everything in her vision waver as easily as though it were disturbed by wind. Nathalie gave a groan and wiped her mouth. Any longer, and she would have been retching again, choking on her blood the same way she had that morning. It had never happened twice in the same day before.

As far as she was aware, time had paused to make way for the episode. It was over now, and that meant she was in danger once again.

She laid in Hawkmoth's shadow. The light streaming into the lair from behind him obscured the expression on his face, drowning everything but the glow of his eyes. Nathalie, attempting to crawl backwards, blinked through her rippling vision to make out a gaze that was utterly without the fury she'd seen when he first turned around.

A flame of hope struck itself to life within her. Quietly, so as not to induce another coughing fit, Nathalie murmured:

"Gabriel?"

A sharp inhale broke his silence, and at once, Hawkmoth dropped to his knees in front of her. Nathalie tensed as he drew her into his arms, but quickly she realized his embrace was warm and gentle, and she could feel remorse pouring out his body with the way that he trembled against her. She melted, burying her face into his chest, feeling that she had finally reached him. The real him. She pressed a hand above his heart and smiled to feel it thrum under her touch.

"Is it really you?" he asked. His hold tightened, just enough that it was still comfortable and kind. "Is it you? Nathalie?"

"It's me," she rasped. "I'm here."

She was surprised to hear a sob spring from his lips. Nathalie pulled away to look into his face, finally seeing clearly enough to witness his full expression: his tearful bright blue gaze, watching her with anguish and relief both, his mouth pulled tight so as not to let another cry escape, the subtlest flush of color to his stone-gray skin.

He touched her like he couldn't comprehend she was real. This was pure amazement radiating from him. Amazement and something more.

"I can't believe it. Oh, Nathalie," he slipped his fingers through her hair and leaned her head against his throat. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I – they – they've tried to fool me before. I thought you were an illusion. I thought –"

She hushed him. "It's okay," she whispered. In truth, she was still very shaken, but his horror at himself promised that he would never try to hurt who he knew for sure to be her.

He held her for several minutes without speaking, crying softly into her hair. Nathalie was frozen with utter uncertainty of how to respond. Never in all her time working with him had she ever seen him quite like this. She had borne witness before to the many consecutive weeks and sparse additional incidents in which he was submerged in despair for what he had lost. But he had never embraced her in this way, so closely and desperately as though he feared she would vanish into thin air if he let go. Nathalie closed her eyes, both grateful to have found him, and terrified for what had happened to lead him all the way to this dismal, frightening place.

"Why didn't you say something?" he asked. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

Instead of answering, he took his face between his hands. He searched her face, he wiped a spot of blood from the corner of her mouth with his thumb, and a thick gloom dulled his bright, emotional gaze.

"Oh no…" he murmured.

"What?"

"How…?" He shook his head. "How are you here? Where did you come from?"

"The past," she answered. "Six months ago."

Astonished, he said, "Just six months? No, it must be longer than that."

"I was told six months," she replied, "But I find it hard to believe myself."

A heavy melancholy settled upon him as tears continued to streak his mask. "So, you really are a ghost?" he rumbled weakly.

"Ghost?"

"Why did you come here?"

Nathalie took one of his hands and rubbed her thumb along his smooth satin knuckles. "The rabbit miraculous holder brought me here. She told me I am supposed to stop you."

"Stop me?" His visage darkened. Softer, he asked, "Did she tell you why?"

"Well, I assume because you've gone too far, Hawkmoth. The city is empty. You know that I'm with you to the end," she assured him before he could protest, "I'm always with you, but what you're doing now, it's destroying reality. We can fix it together if you give up this akuma."

Hawkmoth stared at her, dumbfounded.

"Please, please, Gabriel, you know I don't want to stand in your way." Gingerly, she added, "We can get Emilie back, but we'll have to come up with a different plan."

"Emilie?" Hawkmoth's voice sounded strange. He spoke his wife's name as though she was practically a stranger. For a moment, there was a wince of guilt in his face, as if remembering an important task that had been long forgotten. But the sadness that persisted was directed at Nathalie. He whispered, "Oh no. You don't know…"

"Know what?" She gasped as he pulled her close again. Hawkmoth set his chin atop her head, his hands desperately clinging to her waist. "Gabriel, what's going on?"

"Nathalie," he said into her hair. "How am I supposed to tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"If it's truly only been six months," he said, his voice low and haunted, "Then I have been without you for nearly four. How can this be? It feels I have spent the last decade of my life trying to get you back."

Nathalie felt as though she had gone deaf to all but the beat of his heart. Her throat closed.

"You…you died," he revealed, and his voice broke. She felt him duck his nose into her hair. "A thousand years could pass, and I would still remember. I thought you had more time. Why didn't you say something?" It was the second time he had asked this question, and now Nathalie knew what he meant. The realization made her shiver, and she remembered how cold it was around her. "Why didn't you tell me you were going to…"

"Gabriel," she said, hardly audible. She wondered how she must have felt in his arms, to be solid and real and breathing.

"I watched you die. I held you as you..." The way he spoke now, it sounded as though he was murmuring right through her, like he was unaware she could hear him. As his hold closed tighter, Nathalie wondered with unease if he had already forgotten she was there with him. "And you told me it was going to be okay. That's what you always said. I wanted to believe you all that time, but I could no longer. You were gone. _Gone_."

"Stop," she whimpered. She curled her fingers into his black jacket, which felt like velvet on her skin. "Stop, please."

He listened, loosening his grip. "I'm sorry."

Nathalie wriggled the rest of the way out of his arms and withdrew, opening the distance between them for the first time since he realized she wasn't an illusion. She tried to find words to say to him, but when she opened her eyes, only a shallow exhale escaped. It was only fully setting in, what Hawkmoth had just told her. She died. She _died_. Just over two months out from the brightly moonlit summer night from which she had been brought. She felt nauseous, and dizzy, and like she couldn't breathe.

Hawkmoth watched her, clearly longing to embrace her once more, but his hands faltered when she brought her knees up to her chest and hugged them close.

She always knew death was the consequence of wearing the peacock miraculous too frequently and too long, and it was something she was ready to endure if it was the only way to achieve their goal. Nathalie had sat with it a long time ago, when transformations became more regular, and illness became more crippling. She stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom and let the tears run off her face, down her neck, off her collarbones and pool on her breast where she always pinned the miraculous. And she decided she was willing to die. She decided it was very, very likely, but that was okay, because if she died, then she could die knowing she did everything in her power to help Gabriel, the man she loved, the man who needed her.

They passed several minutes in silence. Each time Nathalie lifted her gaze from the floor to Hawkmoth's countenance, she was met with a pointed somberness that seemed to extend both directions, out to her, and deeper into his own soul. A dazzle of hope would brighten the electricity in his eyes, as he wondered every time she glanced up if she would return to his arms, but Nathalie was paralyzed by shock and confusion.

Then, Hawkmoth spoke, his finger tracing some haphazard shape along the floor between them. "That day was one of the worst of my life," he began, "It all happened so fast. You'd been getting sicker and sicker, but you always tried to hide it. One day, you were standing in the atrium, right after Adrien had left for a photoshoot, and you collapsed." The eyes that had been keenly watching her glazed over. Nathalie had seen Gabriel get lost in moments of reflection before, but his face changed so severely this time that she could barely recognize him now. A cold sweat broke out on the back of her neck. "You were unresponsive for five minutes. I did something I had never done for you before. I called an ambulance. I held you as I waited, trying to wake you. You came to, just long enough to tell me you had done everything you could, that everything was going to be okay, and then you were gone. You were gone before help arrived. When they tried to revive you, you didn't come back."

Nathalie was too preoccupied trying not to throw up to respond. Everything in her body, every nerve, every cell, felt sick and wrong and hollow.

"But I'm going to save you," he went on, his finger pausing. "All of this, everything you have seen, it is all to bring you back. The day you died, something broke inside me, something that could only be fixed by having you in my life again. I – I need you, Nathalie. As soon as I get my hands on Ladybug and Chat Noir's miraculous, then we _will_ both be okay. It will have never happened."

Nathalie blanched. She didn't know how to tell him that it wasn't meant to be.

"May I?" he asked. She gave a limp nod, and he scooped her up into his arms. Rising to his feet, Hawkmoth turned to face the great window and looked out into the shell of a city her death had left behind.

"I've been waiting for all these months for Ladybug and Chat Noir to come out of hiding. It can't be long now. They could not conceivably be so spiteful of me to believe that letting Paris die like this is a better fate for it than their surrender. I was beginning to lose hope," he said quietly, but he turned his eyes on her, and a spark of joy within them rolled her stomach. "But you are here now. You may be from the past, but I know now, you were sent to give me strength. I am on the right path. I will succeed. I must."

"You're not thinking straight," she mumbled.

Hawkmoth blinked at her, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"You're akumatized. You're not yourself." She cupped his cheek, caressing her thumb along the butterfly-shaped detail in his mask. "You don't really want this."

Incredulous, Hawkmoth set her down. She continued to grip his forearms for support, unsure how steady she could manage to stand on her own feet. "How could you say that?" Hawkmoth demanded. "I don't really want this? Are all the things I felt when you died not real? Was your fate not to tear me apart?"

"Hawkmoth, I always knew the risks," said Nathalie, and he recoiled as if she had struck him. "I know what happened to me was painful. I know you always cared about me, but you have let it cloud your head. I did all I could for you. You need to bring Emilie back, remember?"

"Are you hearing yourself?" returned Hawkmoth, sounding more terrified than angry.

"Please, I don't want to tell you that it doesn't hurt. I can see that you're hurt, as clear as day. I'm so sorry that I wasn't strong enough to help you succeed." Nathalie tried to stifle the tears threatening to spill down her face. "But this is not the future destined for us. Bunnyx told me I had to put a stop to this. I'm sorry, Hawkmoth. The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but –"

He put his hands on her waist and stepped closer, his eyes glowing wildly with dread. "How could you listen to her? After everything you've seen, after everything I've told you?"

"I'm sorry," she told him miserably.

Hawkmoth shook his head, his expression twisted in anguish.

"I can fix it. Bunnyx told me that when I return to the present, there is still something I can do to prevent this from happening. Whatever it takes, I'll make sure it never comes to this." Nathalie hardened her features, trying to communicate a conviction that was solid, even if it was still pale and flimsy.

"But six months ago, Nathalie? How do you know that is not already too late?" he asked flatly.

She was going to respond. Her lips parted and a small inhale passed into her windpipe, but the words stalled as he reached for her hands. Hawkmoth, for a moment, took his eyes off her face and let them travel down. As his fingers slipped under hers, a pair of thumbs pressed delicately on the back of her hands. Nathalie watched him, watched his gaze switch from hand to hand, watched the softening of his expression right before he squeezed her fingers. When he brought his eyes back up to hers, a swell of some deep but gentle emotion flooded their bright blue waters, an emotion that quickened the pace of Nathalie's heart.

A profound tenderness emanated from him and sank into her own skin, warming her blood. Nathalie's breath released in a long sigh. She held his stare, and a teardrop broke free from one eye, easing slowly down her cheek.

 _No_ , she told herself. _He is akumatized. He doesn't want what he thinks he wants, as much as he thinks he wants it. He doesn't…_

Nathalie could not finish the thought. Everything she had seen so far was bound to contradict it. There were things she had seen that morning that should change her mind. Gabriel's persistent worry, his hands on her back, his eyes searching for a sign across the room, and the months and months of build-up leading up to it all. She'd started to recognize uncertainty in his voice, in his movements, guilt and fear and helpless gratitude. She had forced herself not to mind the times he let his goals fall through the cracks for her sake. She defined those moments as _backing down_ , when all along they had been moments of _choosing her_. They were flashing through her mind now, as she stared at him, as she took in the view of this dark, dangerous, petrified, grieving man, dressed, she realized, in mourning. For _her_.

_He doesn't…_

He would have never become this if he didn't…

_He does…_

Nathalie reeled, and to Hawkmoth it must have appeared that she was falling backwards, for he pulled her back.

_He loves me._

"What am I thinking?" he said to himself, cutting off the response she had intended to make to his previous question. "I need to have you rest. You're not well."

Her mind surged into a brief panic, but she remembered, thanks to the sudden movement, what had brought her there in the first place. "Wait," she told him, "Hawkmoth, I need to know, what could have been done differently to prevent this? What could _I_ have done? What could _you_ have done? If I can still change things, I need to know how."

He gave her a pained look. "Oh…" Pinching his eyes shut for a moment, he answered, "I should have stopped. I was an empty-headed coward who was waiting for you to tell me something was wrong. I wish you'd said something. I was too foolish to listen to my own judgment." He cupped her cheek. "But you don't have to worry about that. It doesn't matter what the time-traveler told you. The only way to ensure everything will return to normal is for me to obtain the miraculous. Don't be afraid. They will be compelled to come out of hiding shortly, if my minions don't find them."

It agonized her to say, but Nathalie, leaning into the palm of his hand, told him, "I understand if you don't trust me right now, and I know it will be difficult to believe it, but this isn't about the miraculous. I don't think it ever was," she murmured. "If you persist in this reality, then I won't be able to change my fate. You'll destroy Bunnyx. I couldn't go back to the present, I couldn't help myself."

"You don't have to, I will."

"Hawkmoth, please, it isn't right."

"Who decides?"

Nathalie swept her gaze up and down Hawkmoth's body. She didn't know what object he had akumatized in order to transform himself this way, but she hoped with all her heart that it wasn't the miraculous, or there would be no way to fix this. Hawkmoth wasn't going to be swayed. Like any akuma, he was stubborn and undeterrable. She might have been able to convince Gabriel, but Gabriel was buried now. She'd have to dig him out by force.

_Think, Nathalie. Think._

When producing a sentimonster, Mayura would send the amok to the sheath of Hawkmoth's rapier. When she enhanced his powers as Catalyst, she closed her hand around its hilt, flooding it with her energy. Based on previous experiences, Nathalie thought the safest bet was that that was where he had placed the akuma.

"Maybe…maybe you're right," she said, eying the scythe lying abandoned on the floor. "The wish would fix everything. Bunnyx told me I needed to stop you, but…I guess there's no way to guarantee I would be alright when all of this was over."

Hawkmoth ran his fingers through her hair, satisfied that her mind seemed to be changing. "Will you allow me to bring you somewhere to rest?"

"Yes, Sir."

He started leading her towards the lift. Nathalie ensured that when they walked, they passed the scythe on her side. The sheen of the blade glared at her, challenging her, practically begging her to be broken.

"I haven't rested well since…" he trailed off and drew her close but did not hold her tight enough that she could not free herself with little effort. "For once, I can be at peace, even if just slightly."

Right as her foot stepped over the scythe's handle, Nathalie wrenched away and bent over, picking the weapon up with both of her hands. She backed away from Hawkmoth, who watched her with bewilderment. It wasn't until she raised the handle horizontally above her leg that it seemed to dawn on him what she was doing.

"Nathalie—!"

She brought the scythe down and broke the handle over her knee. She tossed both halves to the floor and waited for a black-winged butterfly to escape, but seconds passed, and nothing happened.

"What?"

Nathalie stiffened in alarm as Hawkmoth lunged, curling his fingers around her wrists. His rage made a white-hot return, igniting in his eyes, pinching his pupils narrow. "What are you doing?" he screeched.

She shrank under his stare, feeling weakened by her failure. "It didn't work…" she said meekly.

" _Why?_ " he growled. He shook her. "Why don't you want me to bring you back? Why are you trying to stop me?" Hawkmoth hung his head, gritting his teeth. His grip fell away from her wrists, and Nathalie watched as he dropped to his knees, pressing his head to her midsection.

"I'm…" she croaked. "I'm sorry, I—"

He hugged her like she could disappear, and Nathalie herself was not certain that she couldn't fade away like a dying light if he released her.

Hawkmoth's voice thundered with anguish when he next spoke.

" _Why are you so determined to die?_ "

Nathalie tossed back her head. She felt saltwater run down her throat, masking the coppery taste that lingered there. The tears that escaped dripped down by her ears and soaked into hair. His words overwhelmed her. She could not reply.

"Why are you so determined to leave when I most need you?" he asked, quieter.

"I don't want to leave you," she whispered. "I don't want to die. I never wanted to die. But I was always ready to."

"Why?" he pled.

"Because I was willing to do whatever it took to make you happy."

"How could you think that it would make me happy to lose you?"

"I didn't," she replied, pressing her hands into his shoulders. "I don't."

Hawkmoth loosened his grip very slowly. He sat back on the heels of his shoes and gave a heavy, turbulent breath. He gazed at the broken scythe, and then back up at her.

"I'm sorry," she murmured. "I'm sorry I never told you how bad everything truly was. I was afraid it would make things worse. I had enough faith in your conscience that it would tear you apart to know how much I was hurting, but I didn't have enough faith that it would change your mind. I thought Emilie was the only one that could make you happy. I thought anything less couldn't possibly suffice. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for not believing in you. I'm sorry I did this to you."

"Nathalie," he murmured, "I never appreciated you enough to realize how far you were willing to go. I never let myself to believe that I could have been happy with…" he reached for her hand, "what I already had. But now that's gone too."

"No, it's not. I can fix this, Gabriel. I don't have to leave you. If you give your akuma, I'll change everything. You'll always have me. I promise, I won't leave you." This time, she reached for him, curling her body over his own. Hawkmoth thawed. She sensed the tension cascade off his shoulders, his breathing become steady and even. Nathalie pressed her face into his neck. "You won't ever have to feel this pain. I'll make sure of it."

"How can you be so certain?" he wondered.

"I was certain I was willing to die if I had to, and I did. But I see now that's not my path. If you want me at your side, then I'll be there, and nothing, no miraculous will drag me away." Nathalie whispered, her throat tightened by the well of tears pouring through, "I am certain because I love you. I love you, Gabriel, more than anything. I never told you when I was alive, but I'll tell you a thousand times now. I love you."

Hawkmoth cupped his hand around the back of her head, before falling back to lay on the floor. Nathalie laughed. She was surprised to hear herself laugh, but she couldn't help the absurd joy and relief that swelled through her chest as she settled beside him, curled against his velvet suit, and feeling for the first time that she could rest and breathe.

He murmured into her ear, "I wish I'd known it sooner. I wish I'd said it back. If I had, then maybe I could have –"

"Shh," she responded, running her fingers along his jaw. "Don't blame yourself. Don't blame yourself unless you can forgive yourself."

"I love you," he said. His eyes glimmered as if a billion stars could glow through an azure sky. "I never want to let you go."

"You'll have to. One last time, and then never again," she said gently. "I need your akuma. Once I free it, I can go back to the present, and I can change everything."

"I was a blind fool just six months ago," he mumbled doubtfully.

Nathalie shook her head. "You're my everything," she promised. "I'll save us both."

Hawkmoth, at long last, gave in.

She saw how much it agonized him to do it. So, despite the limited time she had, she agreed to lay there beside him for several minutes, basking in her presence, in the life he could feel flowing through her breath on his cheek, and the pulse of her heart beneath the fingertips he spread below her collarbones. This was going to be the last time Hawkmoth would ever see her, at least this version of Hawkmoth, and though he surrendered to her vow, Nathalie knew the torment that must have been ravaging his soul to think she would slip from his sight once more, never to be seen again.

"I'm here," she reminded him, when his gaze went glassy. She pressed his hand.

"One more moment," he breathed. "Just one more."

That moment passed, and he lied by telling her he was ready. Hawkmoth lifted Nathalie to her feet, and hand in hand, they walked to the lift, traveling through the darkness together. Hawkmoth minded none of the damage done to the atelier when they had arrived. He led Nathalie wordlessly to the opposite side of the room, his pace slow and body language reluctant, before he stopped at her desk. Up close, she noticed that a layer of dust coated the glass. She rubbed away a streak of it beneath her palm, an unusual, sharp pang blooming between her lungs. It had never fully set in, that she had entered a world she was meant to be buried six feet beneath. The thick coat of dust clinging to her skin, indicating the passage of time with no body of hers to move around, was strangely one of the more pointed reminders she had received so far.

Hawkmoth opened a drawer. By the sound of it, it was still full of various office supplies and hadn't been touched. With a shaking hand, Hawkmoth pulled out the akumatized object and held it out for Nathalie to take.

Her glasses.

"I can't do it," he told her sullenly.

"Gabriel…"

"Take them."

Nathalie pinched them between the bridge and lifted them out of his satin palm. With a deep breath, and watching Hawkmoth grimace in anticipation, she snapped them in half.

The akuma flew free, wings of onyx well-suiting the black and white room that surrounded them. Hawkmoth's transformation dropped, leaving him standing in his usual violet suit and gunmetal mask. With a flick of his wrist, the darkness drained out of the butterfly's wings.

"Dark wings fall."

A stream of purple light tumbled from his head to his feet.

Gabriel Agreste was sallow and thin, and Nathalie couldn't imagine that she looked any better when she was suffering from her worst attacks. His skin had grayed, his clothes hung loose off his body, and heavy purple craters bored into the skin beneath dull eyes. He swayed on his feet, leaning on her desk for support, as he gazed incredulously around the room. He must not have realized that state of destruction he'd produced. He stared for a particularly long while at the portrait behind Nathalie's head, mouth slowly falling open, then clamping shut as the shadows thickened around his face.

Nathalie stepped forward, wrapping her arms about his waist, wincing at the feeling of his ribs under her grip. He clasped his hands behind her back. Nathalie felt him shivering.

"It's okay," she told him. "We'll both be okay. All of this will disappear."

She lifted herself onto her toes and kissed him tenderly on the center of the forehead, between two wiry strands of gray hair.

"I'll see you soon."

As she pulled away, Gabriel shut his eyes and leaned forward. His lips met hers desperately at first, but as Nathalie returned his affection, the kiss softened. He trailed his fingertips down her cheek, as warm and as faint as teardrops running across her skin. Nathalie's heart broke.

"My dear," he wept, "Don't go."

She smiled sadly against his lips and kissed him again. "I must. You're waiting for me somewhere else."

They parted. His hand slid off her face. Nathalie tried to appear as strong-willed as possible, but in truth, she had not a clue what she would do as soon as she made it back to the present. Though her promises would never be in vain, her mind was empty of the words to say, and her heart drained of courage.

But for his sake, she stood tall.

Always for him.

Before closing the atelier door behind her, she said, "I love you. Endlessly."

Bunnyx emerged from her burrow in the atrium, and Nathalie paled to find her the entirety of her right arm missing, and her left leg vanished below the knee. She could hesitate no longer. She entered the burrow behind the hero. They meandered across the bright interior, and Bunnyx led her back to the present.

"You know what to do now," said the rabbit miraculous hero.

"No," Nathalie cried, "I don't."

"Yes, you do. I saw everything, Sancoeur. It's clear as day what must be done."

"If acting on love wasn't enough, then what will be?"

"Acting on love wasn't the problem," Bunnyx said. They stopped at the gate, and before pushing Nathalie through to the other side, Bunnyx gripped her shoulder comfortingly, "Love has been the answer. The difference is, you need to act on love believing you deserve it back. It will serve you both."

Nathalie braced as she passed through the gate, the blinding white lights swallowed into obscurity behind her. She stumbled through the dark of her bedroom, coming to a steady pause as she wrapped her arms around a bedpost, trying not to lose control of her breath.

The burrow closed, and the warmth of a summer night sank into her skin. The silence drowned her in its unbearable normalcy.

Taken by a wave of dizziness, Nathalie collapsed onto her bed. She ran her hands down her face and sobbed, both at the piercing pain in her head and out of grief for who she had left behind to disappear.

The Hawkmoth she saw was never going to exist, but she would remember him forever. It was almost too much to bear.

When Nathalie opened her eyes again, she found herself soaked in silvery-yellow light. The moon had not moved a single inch across the sky.


	3. Like You Missed a Thousand Years

Part III - Like You Missed a Thousand Years

If Nathalie wasn't so ill, she wouldn't have been able to sleep at all, but after spending several hours agonizing under the drifting moonlight, she eventually grew weary enough to fall unconscious until the crack of dawn. Pale sun reached through her window to stir her awake, and the first sound Nathalie heard the morning was her own low-pitched groan, rattling in her congested chest at the deep, dull pounding of her skull.

From that moment on, she was restless as she had been upon her return from the future. Nathalie tossed her body left and right beneath her sheets. She kicked her feet and she beat her fist against the mattress and she buried her face in her pillow to release a frustrated cry. When her alarm went off several minutes later, she restrained herself from throwing the phone into the opposite wall.

That morning, Nathalie spent well over an hour rehearsing her explanation in the mirror. The story started out a vague, rather untruthful retelling of her experience, chalking everything up to no more than an epiphany that struck her in the middle of the night, a realization that their goal would inevitably cause more pain than joy for the both of them, but even though Nathalie knew that Gabriel loved her, she understood that this would still sound outrageous to him now. Little by little, she started to sprinkle in more detail, until she was admitting that she had seen six months into the future; until she was explaining that he akumatized himself into an undefeatable monster, dooming himself to inhabit a mind that was not entirely his own; until she was revealing through tears that she had died. She was going to die in his arms sometime in August. Everything went wrong because they stuck to their current path despite all the suffering laying visibly ahead of them. They needed to change course. They needed to keep her alive. At the very least, they needed to change the way they felt about each other – _he_ needed to change the way he felt about her…

But then Nathalie hung her head over her bathroom sink and gave a shuddering sigh. No, she told herself, she wasn't supposed to die. The solution was not to somehow coach Gabriel into falling out of love with her so she could pass without consequence. That wouldn't make things better, it would only make them colder.

"He needs you," she muttered. Nathalie splashed a palmful of cold water on her face, realizing too late that she had just ruined the makeup she'd spent the last fifteen minutes applying. She ran late fixing it, but soon enough she had finally forced herself out the door.

She practiced in the car as well. The story churned mechanically between her lips: "Bunnyx arrived in the middle of the night to fetch me for an important mission….I discovered you had akumatized yourself.…Your goal had changed….You were trying to bring me back from the dead….Continuing as we are threatens reality as we know it. Fate dictates we change course, or all is lost."

 _All is lost_. That was the most emotional statement Nathalie made throughout her entire speech. She couldn't risk sounding too affected, not while so much as at stake for Gabriel. The more reasonable she presented herself to be, the more likely he was to listen.

She sat in the front drive of the Agreste mansion for five minutes, trying to quell the nervousness that made every inch of her body feel weak and rubbery. It was like her soul had grown small and failed to take up all the space of its vessel. Her limbs only half-belonged to her, shivering madly as she pulled the key from the ignition and got out of the car. All of her weight felt concentrated in her heart. Nathalie pressed a hand to her chest and took several deep breaths.

 _Pull it together. Just as you've rehearsed_.

Climbing the front steps proved difficult with her feeble legs but when she entered the house at last, she couldn't help but recall the way it had looked six months into the future. There was really nothing different in the atrium at all, but seeing the atelier totally intact made her feel cold, especially when she laid her eyes on her desk. It appeared just as it had then minus the coat of dust dulling the shine of sun on the glass.

She purposefully turned away from his side of the room and set her purse and tablet beside her computer. Nathalie jumped as his voice cut in, closer than she imagined it to be.

"I was about to call you."

She gripped the edge of the desk to steady herself, swallowing a yelp of unease. Gabriel's footsteps sounded from behind, and then his hand was delicately clasping her shoulder. He noticed immediately that she tensed under his touch and let his hand slide away.

"Are you okay?"

_Alright, just tell him. I have something to say, Sir. Bunnyx arrived in the middle of the night…_

Her lips parted, but no words escaped between them. There was nothing but a tiny breath. She felt fragile.

"Nathalie." He came around to her side, leaning close to get a look at her face. "Is there something wrong? You still seem unwell."

"I'm sorry I'm late, Sir," she told him, her voice coming hollow. "I didn't sleep very peacefully last night."

"It's okay. I suppose I just wanted to ask if you were feeling any better than yesterday?" he replied, reaching out again, this time letting his fingers curl around her upper arm. With patience, he waited for her answer. Nathalie realized he already knew that she was feeling sick as ever, and that he knew she was going to dismiss his concerns with a wave of her hand the same way she always did. I'm fine, Sir. Don't worry about me. I'm only tired.

She felt nauseous at herself, at all of those lies she told and what they would do to him.

Nathalie risked a glance at Gabriel and found his blue-gray eyes keen and soft, his lips pursed in concern, and the rest of him as neatly arranged as he tended to be, nothing at all like the man she had met the night before. His silver hair was gelled back, his clothes were spotless, his skin was still tan and smooth. Nathalie felt like she was staring at a ghost. A perfect, beautiful ghost. A muffled cry broke out from the back of her throat, and before she knew it, her cheeks were wet with tears. Nathalie released the table and fastened her grip about his forearms. She cried that he felt solid and real, and she cried even harder as she leaned her face into his chest, pressing her forehead right into the place she knew his miraculous was pinned.

Gabriel, stunned, wrapped his arms quite loosely around her body. He didn't speak as she sobbed against him.

"No," she gasped, sinking her fingers into the fabric of his jacket. "No, I'm not any better. I'm not any better. I'm sorry."

He raised a hand to her upper back and held her a little closer, still saying nothing. Everything that Nathalie had planned to tell him that morning went totally out of her head. She'd forgotten it all the moment she had looked at his face and imagined the man he was bound to become if she didn't make the right move, if she didn't say the right thing _for once_. She couldn't treat this the way she treated everything else in her life – like it was no big deal, like there was some rational, reasonable solution, because nothing about this was rational and reasonable. Nothing at all.

Her cries ended as coughs took their place. Nathalie peeled herself away from Gabriel, stumbling back and pressing a fist up to her lips. The coughs started as a series of choked gasps, but they became more and more ragged over time until Nathalie was doubled over, desperately hoping that she wouldn't start spitting blood out onto the floor. Gabriel rubbed soothing circles between her shoulder blades, until she finally regained her breath.

"Easy," he murmured.

"Gabriel…" She coughed again, softer this time.

He shook his head. "Shh, one more moment."

_One more moment._

Nathalie's legs finally gave. She sank to the floor in despair, her head spinning, her chest tight.

"I can't…" she sighed. She felt as though an old nail had torn its way through her lungs and throat. "I can't keep doing this. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

He joined her on the floor and set an arm around her shoulders. "Don't apologize."

"I can't be Mayura ever again." Nathalie's head dropped back, rolling against his arm. "I know I promised I'd help you to the end, but I can't. I'm going to die, Gabriel," she told him, blinking sadly up into his worried visage. "I'm going to die."

Something flickered through his eyes, something that ever so slightly reminded her of that wide, electric blue gaze of his in another world. "No, you're not," he vowed. Nathalie felt her bones freeze at the vehemence with which he spoke. "I won't allow it."

"Forgive me, please," she begged. Nathalie trailed a hand gently down his face. "I'm…so scared I waited too long to tell you. I'm worse than I let you believe. I started coughing blood two weeks ago. Every day it just gets more and more severe and I –" She cut off with gasp and wiped the tears from her eyes. "Oh, Gabriel, I'm sorry."

He was utterly bewildered by her words. Every few seconds, he pressed her hand, trying to make her respond to him. "I've never seen you like this before," he told her soberly. There was fear in his face that he was trying to keep out of his tone, which sounded unnaturally flat to her.

"I'm sorry."

"Stop saying that. Tell me, did something happen last night? Something that…made you realize…"

"I had a bad episode yesterday in the bathroom. I thought I was dying." Nathalie's heart raced. She was sweating. She pulled at her collar as though that could dislodge the lump of dread in her throat. "And last night…"

He watched her with wide eyes, his hold around her tightening. Nathalie's gaze dropped down to his chest. With trembling fingers, she lightly gestured to his hidden brooch.

"What is it?" he whispered. "What happened? You need to talk to me, Nathalie."

"I know, it's…" Her fingers brushed his tie and traced the shape of the jewel beneath it. "I don't know. I don't know if I can tell you yet, but what you need to know now is that you…"

He took her hand off his chest and squeezed her hand gently, pressing his fingertips into her palm. He was so kind with her. So patient and tender and…

Loving.

"You're going to lose me to this," she said. "You're going to lose me."

Gabriel winced, and her heart broke for him. Nathalie drew an inch away as he looked over his shoulder at the atelier door, which had been left ajar upon her entry. "Nathalie, you're going to be okay, I promise."

"Gabriel –"

"No. You're _going to be okay_." He said it with such a fire in his throat that Nathalie, for a fraction of a second, let herself forget what had come of her six months from now. Taking a moment to let his passion fade, Gabriel slowly reached up and pinched her glasses between his thumb and forefinger. He readjusted them, as they had gone askew while she was crying. Then, he sighed. "We'll talk about this soon, but I don't want you to overwhelm yourself. I'll bring you somewhere to rest. You're in no condition to be on your feet right now."

The color drained from his face when she didn't argue with him. Hastily, he scooped her into his arms and brought her to a guest room, the one she'd stayed in on some of her worst days. Gabriel placed her directly on the bed and then backed away to give her space. Nathalie drew her knees to her chest, feeling tired and sad and helpless, and not trying to hide any of it.

Gabriel watched her, his hand on the doorknob. Several moments of unsettling quiet passed between them before he called out, "Listen to me, you're not going to die. Emilie was using the peacock miraculous right up until she fell asleep, and I am going to hold you to it, that you said you wouldn't be Mayura again." The curtains were shut in the room, and there was an intense glow in his gaze that bored into her spirit as he tilted his chin towards his throat. "I refuse to lose anybody else to that miraculous. I'll do anything, anything to keep you with me, the same way you always said you'd do anything for me."

Nathalie stared at him, simultaneously moved and chilled by his declaration. She gave a faint nod. "I know."

"You have to understand. Watching you get so sick, it's made me wonder recently if…" He trailed off and retreated halfway behind the open door. "Forgive me. I always wanted to believe you when you told me you were okay. I should have listened to my instincts instead of letting you fall this ill."

"Don't apologize. I was…" Nathalie's voice cracked, and she closed her eyes. "I was ready to give it all up."

After a solemn silence, he looked ready to bow out of the room, but he paused suddenly and turned back with a wide-eyed expression. "I'm relieved," he admitted, surprising her, "that you've changed your mind. I've never taken your loyalty for granted. But it hurt to see you in so much pain."

A tear slid off her jaw, landing on her collar bone as he spoke.

He exhaled, as if those words had removed a burden from his heart. "Rest well. I'll come back soon, and you can tell me what happened."

"Okay," she whispered. Nathalie sat back against the pillows and set her gaze up on the ceiling. "Gabriel?"

"Yes?"

"I…"

She wanted to tell him. She wanted to tell him because saying it last night had filled him with so much warmth and comfort that for a moment it almost seemed like he'd found joy after years of being empty of it. She spread her body across the mattress and all she wanted to be was on that cold metal floor of the lair again, curled up against his body with his breath on her ear and his hands tangled in her hair, basking in that temporary moment of bliss as if it would last them an eternity, as if it wouldn't be wiped away like it had never happened anywhere else but in her mind. Nathalie almost told him. Nathalie was _going_ to tell him. But she cut herself off with a sharp inhale. It was all too easy to lay there in the dark and forget that admitting she loved him was going to save her life. Maybe there was a part of her that wasn't brave enough to survive and watch everything change, because even now, she didn't know exactly where she would land.

But Gabriel cleared his throat. She turned her head to see him still standing in the doorway, the softest light illuminating his face to reveal an almost imperceptible smile.

"I know," he said, voice a ripple of warm water against her skin. Something changed in the air; something changed in her heart, a thorn being plucked away, blood being free to flow. As the door swung shut, Nathalie was left alone with his words: "And I, you."

* * *

Gabriel recovered all of the overturned chairs in the room, pushing them gently back into a pleasant-looking arrangement. He couldn't remember exactly where they were all meant to go, but he supposed it didn't really matter anyway. He swept up broken glass, fixed the alignment of the one photograph still hanging on the wall, and straightened a rug, before turning at last to her desk across the room.

His heart screamed at him not to touch it. But after several deep breaths, Gabriel forced his feet to march the length of the atelier and roll her chair back behind that dusty, long-forgotten computer. Gabriel wiped off her keyboard and her printer. He centered the mouse precisely on its black white checkered pad, which, he remembered, had been a spontaneous gift from him the previous April, after she'd complained under her breath that her old one was beginning to wear. Gabriel placed her empty glasses case back in a drawer and shut it firmly, the slam surprising him. It was the loudest sound he had heard in the house for months.

He set his eyes on her mug. It was empty, but a stain of coffee coated the bottom. He needed to wash it (really, he didn't _need_ to do anything at all). Gabriel snatched the mug off the desk and began making his way for the kitchen.

He was halfway through the dining room when the mug smashed onto the floor, shattering into a dozen pieces.

Gabriel stared. He took another deep breath. He backed away from the mess and began to make his way for the broom, when he paused to look at his hand.

Or rather, to look at the empty space where his hand _should_ have been.

"Nathalie?" he said. Gabriel swept his gaze around the room, knowing she wasn't really there, but there was something about his hand's sudden disappearance that made him expect her.

It was weird. He didn't really feel like his hand was missing. It didn't hurt. It didn't bother him at all, strangely. He retrieved the broom, but when he entered the dining room once more, he found that the broken mug was missing too. Each and every piece of ceramic. Gone. Like he'd never dropped it.

Gabriel knew what was happening now. Without a word, he opened the front door and stepped out into the freezing wind. He was without a jacket, but it didn't much bother him. He took a seat on the steps and waited. He waited through the passage of the day, letting out a sigh whenever he saw something disappear. His right leg vanished around three in the afternoon. A couple buildings in the distance flickered out of existence, and pretty soon, the sky was a clear gray sheet of cloud, uninterrupted by the shapes of Paris rooftops.

He stopped feeling the wind eventually, probably around seven at night, but he supposed there was no use of thinking in hours anymore. Gabriel smiled and laid back, cushioning his head with his remaining fingers. He wasn't sad to say goodbye to this pitiful world, this world that he had broken himself. He was terrified that he would be left to roam it alone forever, but he should have known better.

He should have known that Nathalie always kept her promises.

At some point, he realized the house had vanished behind him, and he was laying on a stairwell surrounded by sky and earth and not much else. Gabriel hummed a song – he wasn't sure what song it was or if there were any songs that he even remembered anymore, but he decided he was going to hum it until there was nothing left to hum.

 _I'll see you soon_ , he thought.

He knew there was a brand-new world blazing into existence, somewhere on the other side of all of this. He liked to imagine he was happy there, drawing her near to him on the cold nights this December had brought them. He hummed his song into her ear as they tried to fall asleep, and her mouth curved softly at the light rasp in his throat. Faint moonlight just barely reflected off those lips. He wanted to kiss them. He would in the morning, once they've had their rest.

He was happy. He was very happy.

Gabriel tapped his remaining foot against stone. All was utterly silent, like he floated in space. One and two and…

And then everything was gone, like a dream forgotten in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to [noorooz](https://noorooz.tumblr.com) for this wonderful idea. I had so much fun working with it. 
> 
> Let me know what you all think! Thanks for reading!


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